Awards Aid High-Tech Firms Working With UT Dallas

State Earmarks $5 Million for Commercializing Research Ideas at 4 Companies

Oct. 14, 2009

UT Dallas researchers are working closely with four high-tech companies that will receive $5 million in the latest round of nine awards from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund through the North Texas Regional Center for Innovation and Commercialization.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced the awards Oct. 8.

DeviceFidelity Inc. of Richardson will receive $3 million to commercialize software for payment via cellphones and other wireless devices.

2Cimple Inc. of Dallas will receive a $1.5 million investment for commercialization of its interactive online video system software.

Advanced Receiver Technologies Inc. of Dallas will receive $250,000 to develop an innovative digital receiver for cellphones and other wireless devices that resolves interference problems that limit network capacity and restrict user connections to a network.

Interoperate.Biz Inc. of Plano will receive a $250,000 investment for the commercialization of its rapid computer language translation software. The program enables the automatic translation of obsolete computer legacy codes to modern computer languages, reducing the time and cost associated with translation.

Several UT Dallas faculty researchers are working with the four companies, demonstrating how universities and industry can collaborate to produce tangible benefits for society, said Dr. Bruce Gnade, UT Dallas vice president for research.

DeviceFidelity is working to commercialize its In2Pay technology, which enables a fast, secure, convenient payment method through wireless devices and could further obviate the need for cash and checks. Dr. J.B. Lee, an associate professor of electrical engineering, is working with DeviceFidelity on important antenna and shielding technologies.

2Cimple is working with Dr. Balakrishnan Prabhakaran, an associate professor of computer science, to commercialize the company’s software.

Advanced Receiver Technologies is working with Dr. Naofal Al-Dhahir, a professor of electrical engineering, on what’s known as single antenna interference cancellation, which addresses issues of dropped calls, slow downloads and frozen video caused by adjacent-cell interference. The technology under development would also improve voice connectivity and offer uninterrupted high-speed broadband to 3G mobile users without changes to the network.

The company Interoperate.Biz is based on language-translation technology developed by Dr. Gopal Gupta and his PhD students over the course of a decade of research at UT Dallas. Gupta, recently named head of the Computer Science Department in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at UT Dallas, is a co-founder of Interoperate.

“We expect to engage in many more projects like these as we continue expanding our collaborations with North Texas industry,” said Dr. Mark W. Spong, dean of the Jonsson School.

More than two dozen North Texas companies have received $35.8 million in commercialization investment through the Emerging Technology Fund in recent years.

The $200 million ETF was enacted by the State Legislature in 2005 and renewed in 2007 to encourage the establishment of early-stage companies, to expedite the commercialization of emerging technology and to simultaneously provide economic development investment in the state.

ETF is also designed to enable Texas universities to establish research superiority by recruiting world-class faculty with experience in commercializing technology.